The Sin of Divinity
by ScintillatingTart
Summary: Her lips were as red as her dress, as scarlet as the words that dripped a bloody sacrifice at his feet; the goddess repenting her sins as she offered herself up for rejection or affirmation.   Morgan/Garcia


I don't own Criminal Minds or anything to do with the show. This is the result of several months of sitting on a few paragraphs of story that needed something done with it. Which I did, and now, I wonder if I went crazy somewhere in the middle.

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><p>The Sin of Divinity<p>

By SintillatingTart

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><p>"The Goddess is in, mere mortal," came her teasingly sensual voice down the line. "Wanna lay down a prayer or are you in the mood for a bit of blasphemy?"<p>

That was the kind of question that made Derek Morgan squirm in his suddenly too-tight pants, but he was still on the clock – at least till he finished his damnable paperwork. "Baby Girl, one of these days –"

"You're going to take me out back and spank me but good, I know, I know," she replied in a glibly bored tone as if she'd heard the spiel over and over again. "What can I say? I just have a little tiny bit of a naughty streak, Hot Stuff. You should totally punish me for being a bad, bad girl."

If he closed his eyes, he could see her perfectly painted pink lips enunciating every last tiny syllable in that confession and subsequent begging for a release from the edge. Their relationship had been at a stand-still for so long that he didn't know whether they were coming, going, or standing still in their own little world. Everything changed around them, but they were the same Morgan and Garcia. They were rocks in the stream, wearing down day by day, but not complaining because they were feeling the rush of water over them, really living day to day by the skin of their teeth.

She had Kevin Lynch. That was the extent of her taking a risk and letting her soul dangle from a precipice.

He had Penelope Garcia. He'd all but given her license to rip his heart out and hold it in her perfect fingers with their multi-colored polish and she'd declined to hold him hostage. That didn't mean that he could walk away, though.

Choosing to love someone and choosing to let someone love you were two totally different things. But he couldn't bear to believe that they were mutually exclusive.

"Hot Stuff?"

He cleared his throat. "Yeah."

"You called me, remember?"

"Movie night?"

"Aw, Sugar, Mama's busy tonight," she replied. "It's one of those things – anniversary things."

Of course. He kicked himself mentally. Just another time marker that he'd learned to ignore. There were too many of those in the course of a year.

"Gotcha," he replied.

Derek knew he had no right to begrudge her happiness – if that's what it was. But he also knew that he missed being with her, even platonically, and that her so-called happiness was to blame for that. He'd made his choice, laid out his cards, and she'd shied away and gone out with Lynch instead. And that was okay: he didn't want a puppet, he wanted an independent woman with her own mind and the smarts to use it against him in a fair fight.

Unfortunately, Penelope Garcia wasn't his woman. She was well on the way to being Mrs. Kevin Lynch, and, despite his pure motives, Derek wanted to throttle the tech and sling her over his shoulder as the spoils of an undeclared war.

Who got to worship at the Goddess's feet?

Not Derek Morgan.

And that pained him more than anything else: that she had seen straight through to the heart of him and had still chosen a different path.

"Handsome, you can hang up if you don't have anything to say," she teased. "You should go out and have some fun tonight."

Pumping iron in the basement wasn't his idea of fun. But that was what he was going to get stuck with.

"I'll see what I can do," he hedged. "Have a good time tonight."

She chuckled. "I'll see what I can do," she echoed. "And movie night tomorrow."

"Movie night tomorrow," he agreed. "How about you choose this time?"

He could hear her smiling down the line. "I chose last time – and the time before. And the time before that."

"How about you bring something and I'll choose something and then we'll choose?" he said with a smile. Movie night was simple, sweet, and all theirs.

"Deal. Now go home and do something fun."

Hours later, he was remembering her entreaty as he finished off another beer. Fun had been weightlifting for a couple of hours and then beer and porn. Some fun. He would much rather have spent the evening with her – something he didn't admit to himself lightly. He'd always been the love-'em-and-leave-'em type, anything to avoid having to face the wall and admit that he needed someone else to keep him sane. But it was too late for that now.

He didn't hear her come into the room: she must have used her key and let Clooney out. "Kevin asked me to marry him," Penelope said in a small, soft voice.

"Congratulations," he muttered, setting aside his bottle and refusing to acknowledge his own demise.

"I told him no."

His heart skipped a beat – like a traitor. "Why would you do that? You love him." The words sounded fake, hollow, tripping from his lips like drunken lies.

"Do I?" she asked, stepping out of his peripheral vision and into sight. He took in her glittery tights, the high heels that didn't match the rest of her outfit, and her simple red dress and jacket. She was dolled up for another man; it made him kick himself because it should have been him.

When he said he loved her, he had meant it way more than he could bear to let on. She was the love goddess that he would give up everything to hold tight – even his status as hero in her eyes. Anything at all – but she didn't want it, did she? Fickle as every other goddess brought to light.

She shook her head and whispered, "I thought I did love him, but everything with him is tied together with conditions – his conditions. What I want doesn't matter; everything is about him. The only reason I was with him was because I was scared."

"Of what?"

"Of you," she said simply. "You said you loved me and I know it's true. That scares the bejesus out of me, Derek. And it's the only thing in my life I know is true. So, no, I won't be marrying Kevin Lynch – or seeing him socially or intimately again."

She was giving him a prophet's sign.

Her lips were as red as her dress, as scarlet as the words that dripped a bloody sacrifice at his feet; the goddess repenting her sins as she offered herself up for rejection or affirmation. And all he could think was that he would forgive her the world if only she would understand how devoted he was.

There were no words that could adequately describe his heart; only a kiss that shattered every misconception they had ever had about their relationship.

And whispered admissions of love.


End file.
